matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/docs/configuring-playbook-synapse-usage-exporter.md

Enabling synapse-usage-exporter for Synapse usage statistics (optional)

synapse-usage-exporter allows you to export the usage statistics of a Synapse homeserver to this container service and for the collected metrics to later be scraped by Prometheus.

Synapse does not include usage statistics in its Prometheus metrics. They can be reported to an HTTP PUT endpoint 5 minutes after startup and from then on at a fixed interval of once every three hours. This role integrates a simple Flask project that offers an HTTP PUT endpoint and holds the most recent received record available to be scraped by Prometheus.

Enabling this service will automatically:

• install the synapse-usage-exporter service
• re-configure Synapse to push (via HTTP PUT) usage statistics information to synapse-usage-exporter
• re-configure Prometheus (if Prometheus is enabled), to periodically scrape metrics from synapse-usage-exporter
• add a new Grafana dashboard (if Grafana is enabled) containing Synapse usage statistics

Adjusting the playbook configuration

To enable synapse-usage-exporter, add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

matrix_synapse_usage_exporter_enabled: true

# (Optional) Expose endpoint if you want to collect statistics from outside (from other homeservers).
# If enabled, synapse-usage-exporter will be exposed publicly at `matrix.example.com/report-usage-stats/push`.
# When collecting usage statistics for Synapse running on the same host, you don't need to enable this.
# You can adjust the hostname and path via `matrix_synapse_usage_exporter_hostname` and `matrix_synapse_usage_exporter_path_prefix`.
# matrix_synapse_usage_exporter_proxying_enabled: true

Adjusting the synapse-usage-exporter URL

By default, this playbook installs synapse-usage-exporter on the matrix. subdomain, at the /report-usage-stats/push path (https://matrix.example.com/report-usage-stats/push). This makes it easy to install it, because it doesn't require additional DNS records to be set up. If that's okay, you can skip this section.

By tweaking the matrix_synapse_usage_exporter_hostname and matrix_synapse_usage_exporter_path_prefix variables, you can easily make the service available at a different hostname and/or path than the default one.

Example additional configuration for your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

# Change the default hostname and path prefix
# These variables are used only if (`matrix_synapse_usage_exporter_proxying_enabled: true`)
matrix_synapse_usage_exporter_hostname: sue.example.com
matrix_synapse_usage_exporter_path_prefix: /

Adjusting DNS records

If you've changed the default hostname, you may need to adjust your DNS records to point the synapse-usage-exporter domain to the Matrix server.

See Configuring DNS for details about DNS changes.

If you've decided to use the default hostname, you won't need to do any extra DNS configuration.

Installing

After configuring the playbook and potentially adjusting your DNS records, run the playbook with playbook tags as below:

ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts setup.yml --tags=setup-all,start

The shortcut commands with the just program are also available: just install-all or just setup-all

just install-all is useful for maintaining your setup quickly (2x-5x faster than just setup-all) when its components remain unchanged. If you adjust your vars.yml to remove other components, you'd need to run just setup-all, or these components will still remain installed. Note these shortcuts run the ensure-matrix-users-created tag too.